Youngstown State police mourn retired explosive-detection K-9 Gino’s death

Youngstown State University Police lost one of its most familiar working dogs when retired K-9 Gino died on April 25. The explosive-detection dog served the department from 2014 to 2024, spending a decade in the kind of work that never looks flashy from the outside but matters every time a crowd gathers, a bag gets checked, or a campus event needs an extra layer of calm.

Gino’s career was built on repetition, discipline and trust. YSU later said he came to the department through an Ohio Homeland Security and Ohio Department of Homeland Security grant, part of a broader effort to put trained bomb-sniffing dogs on state university campuses. When Gino retired in May 2024, the university said he had served 10 years and then went home with his handler, Sgt. Mark Mehley, a detail that says as much about the bond behind the badge as it does about the work itself.

That bond is why Gino’s death landed with weight inside the department. Campus police K-9s are not mascots or photo-op dogs. They are part of the safety backbone for a school that says its police department has 26 full-time and 83 part-time commissioned officers, operates 24 hours a day and maintains mutual-aid agreements with the Youngstown City Police Department, the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Department and other Ohio state universities. Gino’s job fit squarely into that system, helping the university screen for threats and reassure students, faculty and visitors in a setting where the pressure can change fast.

YSU has already kept the program moving. On March 17, 2025, the department announced Barkley, a 1.5-year-old German Shepherd from Holland, as its new K-9 officer. Barkley completed five weeks of training at Shallow Creek Kennels in Sharpsville, Pennsylvania, and works with officer Hope Stoner as an explosives, firearms and person-borne odor detection dog. The university said it received a grant to continue the K-9 program after Gino retired, keeping the line of service intact rather than letting it fade.

Gino’s story also reaches back to the start. When YSU brought him on in 2014, the department said he was one of three state-university dogs funded through federal grant support via the Ohio Department of Homeland Security. Chief John Beshara said then that Gino would strengthen the department’s ability to prepare for bomb-related emergencies. Eleven years later, his death marked the end of a working partnership that shaped campus security and left a clear standard for the dogs that followed.